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Why the WoW movie won’t be like Spiderman

According to WoW.com, the ‘Warcraft Movie’ will soon be upon us. I’m getting flashbacks to the 1994 Street Fighter . I guess the significant point here is that convergence is powerful and Warcraft brings an existing ‘socially immersive’ aspect that was not present in successful solo-franchise movies such as Tombraider or Spiderman. Sam Raimi is best known for directing all the recent Spiderman works and cult horror films (Drag me to Hell). It will be very interesting to see how the opportunities for shared reality are explored by Raimi and Blizzard.

Usually, games spawned from movies to consoles, with the exception of Golden Eye and Wolverine – are terrible. The AI is overdone; the cut-aways highlight the rest of the game’s weaknesses or game-play is simply not enjoyable. Star Wars have been getting it wrong for years. More significantly, these games are aimed at the ‘casual gamer’. WoW is a social game that operates more like a hobby than anything else for it’s 8.5 million players – and is the incumbent king of MMOs.

Blizzard have been talking about this movie for a few years, and so their choice of director is a very ‘big’ deal. Given the massive revenue WoW generates – Warcraft players will not be impressed by any attempt to simply ‘knock out a spin off movie’. Let’s face it, Blizzard are rumored to be pulling US$80 million a month from a game that it has been said cost $80million to make.

Go with honour – I’m buying the popcorn special with WoW mega-slurpie.